BERLIN (AP) — An 80-year-old former officer of the communist East German secret police, the Stasi, was sentenced Monday to 10 years in prison for the murder of a Polish man at a border crossing in divided Berlin 50 years ago.
The Berlin state court said in its ruling that there was no doubt that the then first lieutenant shot 38-year-old Polish citizen Czesław Kukuczka in an ambush on March 29, 1974 on the orders of the East German secret police, the German news agency dpa reported.
“It was not the act of an individual for personal reasons, but planned and mercilessly carried out by the Stasi,” chairman Bernd Miczajka said in his sentencing remarks. He said the defendant, whose name was withheld in accordance with German privacy rules, fired the shot “at the end of a chain of command,” dpa reported.
The court did not accept the Berlin public prosecutor’s request for a twelve-year prison sentence. The suspect’s lawyer had demanded an acquittal. According to lawyer Andrea Liebscher, it was not proven that her client had fired the fatal shot, dpa reports.
The suspect remained silent in court, but his lawyer said at the start of the trial that he denied the allegations. The verdict can still be appealed.
The case dates back to March 29, 1974, when Kukuczka allegedly brought a fake bomb to the Polish embassy to threaten officials into allowing him to leave for West Berlin, and the Stasi decided to pretend to approve his departure.
According to prosecutors, he was given exit documents and escorted to a border crossing at Friedrichstrasse train station in East Berlin.
The defendant – who was 31 at the time – was given the task of “defusing” the Polish man, prosecutors said. After the Pole passed the last checkpoint, the suspect allegedly shot him in the back from a hiding place.
Authorities made little progress in the case until a decisive tip about the shooter’s identity emerged from the Stasi’s extensive archives in 2016, dpa reported. Prosecutors initially suspected the case would amount to manslaughter, which, unlike murder, falls under the statute of limitations in Germany.
East Germany built the Berlin Wall in 1961, preventing most citizens from traveling to the West. Many tried to escape by tunneling under it, swimming past it, climbing or flying over it. At least 140 people were killed in the attempt.
The heavily fortified border opened on November 9, 1989, a key moment in the collapse of communism in Europe. Germany was reunited less than a year later.